Nadav Lapid's Satire 'Synonyms' Wins Golden Bear at Berlinale 2019

As another film festival comes to an end, it's time to celebrate and commemorate with the announcement of the awards. The 69th Berlin Film Festival is finishing up, and the winners were revealed at the Closing Ceremony, including the winner of the coveted Golden Bear for Best Film. That top prize was given to a film called Synonyms, directed by Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid (seen above), regarded by most critics as the best of the fest anyway. It's a French-Israeli dramatic satire set in Paris that's about the difficulties of immigration and integration. Other big winners include François Ozon's By the Grace of God about abusive priests, and the documentary Talking About Trees covering Sudanese cinema. Full list of the winners below.

Here are the top awards at the 69th Berlin Film Festival. For the full list including shorts visit Berlinale.de.

Golden Bear for Best FilmSynonyms (Synonymes), directed by Nadav Lapid

That puts a final cap on the 69th Berlin Film Festival, wrapping up 10 days of cinema in Germany, as well as our own coverage here on FirstShowing. Berlinale is another prominent film festival taking place early every year, showcasing great films from all over the world. The 2019 international jury included: Juliette Binoche (President), Justin Chang, Sandra Hüller, Sebastián Lelio, Rajendra Roy and Trudie Styler. Congratulations to all of the winners! This year's picks for all the prizes seem to be a varied selection of the very best of the festival and the very worst, which is not so surprising. I'm very happy to see Synonyms win the Golden Bear, totally deserves it for being so original. Watch out for these films and many others playing at festivals soon.